Word: kennan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...NUCLEAR DELUSION by George F. Kennan; Pantheon; 208 pages; $13.95 WITH ENOUGH SHOVELS by Robert Scheer; Random House; 285 pages...
George F. Kennan's answer is that these deployments have become such a dangerous fact of life because American leaders have too often failed to think realistically about their consequences. Even a "limited" nuclear conflict would, in his opinion, quickly lead to a transcendent catastrophe. "There is no issue at stake in our political relations with the Soviet Union ... which could conceivably be worth a nuclear war," writes the dean of American Kremlinologists. Therefore the vow to retaliate against Soviet aggression with the American nuclear arsenal quite simply does not make sense to him. It is either a bluff...
...Mount Holyoke President Elizabeth Kennan, a medievalist, believes that the "genuine integration" of humanities and sciences will strengthen the liberal arts. Says she: "The heart of a liberal arts education is concern with the world we find ourselves in, our ability to comprehend it and make moral judgments about our action...
...That power seemed so predatory and implacable that the Western democracies believed their only hope was to band together and deter further Soviet expansionism. The idea of actively coaxing the U.S.S.R. toward a more humane social order seemed out of the question. The author of the containment doctrine, George Kennan, held out the dim hope that if the Soviet aggressive drive were held in check, perhaps the regime might mellow. But that would happen only very gradually. Because of the internal dynamics of the Soviet Union, Kennan argued, American influence on that country's evolution could only be oblique...
These actions have shaken the Atlantic Alliance and stirred anew the long-running debate on whether trade sanctions are wise or even effective. Outspoken criticism of the President's policy comes not only from Europeans but also from many American foreign affairs experts. Said George Kennan, former American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, in a speech in Frankfurt last week: "We must immediately and completely stop every type of economic warfare. The attempt to prevent or set back the entire economic development of another people has no place in the politics of a democratic state in times of peace...